2020/2 – #Method

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Towards an understanding of children’s screen genres in the streaming video era: Reflecting on shifting intersections between digital media and screen studies
Balanzategui, Jessica (2020) , S. 249-272
On-demand streaming video services, including the video-sharing platform YouTube and the subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) service Netflix, have replaced television to become the most popular means of accessing video content amongst children in a number of countries. These streaming video platforms have introduced new generic paradigms into the domain of children’s media, and children’s genres form, circulate, and are consumed on these platforms in ways that differ from legacy media (film and television). The streaming video ecology thus poses new challenges for studies of children’s screen genres and media consumption. This article offers a methodological provocation, contending that this context calls for the integration of traditions in screen studies – namely audience research and genre analysis – with approaches to platform analysis drawn from digital media studies. Such an interdisciplinary methodology promises to illuminate how new children’s genres have formed in the streaming video ecology, and how these genres circulate culturally, including how children engage with these content types.